Cushings: A Dog Owner's Guide

Hi, this is Rita Hogan and welcome to the Dogs Are Individuals podcast. I'm a clinical canine herbalist and I've been practicing for over 20 years. This podcast is all about your dog.

Through an herbal lens.

So let's get to it and dive right in.

Hi, everyone. How are you guys doing?

I kind of feel like I haven't.

Talked to you in a while and I have. It's weird. So I'm here in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. In fact, I don't even know the name of the city that I'm in right now. How about that?

It's off the highway.

Drove for a while today. Thinking about doing a Live from the Car. I could do it, right? I could do it. I think maybe people would find that fun. I'm not positive, but I might try it. How are you guys doing? So I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good. I'm on my book tour. Of course, you know, that's going to be a while. It's going to be a while. I got some exciting things to share with you. Coming up. Not yet. I got to get the confirmation and then I got some exciting stuff to show to share, but. Hi. So we're going to talk about Cushing's today. I had a request to talk about Cushing's and Addison's and we're going to talk about Cushing's first and then we're going to talk about Addison's not in the same episode.

This is probably going to be like a.

Might be like a four episode deal, but that's what we're going to do. I'm going to answer these questions for people on Cushings. So before we get there, I want to thank my sponsors and this is a double thanks because, like, Green Juju sponsors my podcast and it sponsors my book tour. So love, love, love you. Thanks, guys. Kelly and Billy, thank you so much. Antoine too. Thank you so, so much. I'm super excited about them coming out with their probiotics coming up. I've got a lot to share about them. We'll wait till they come out, but I'm super excited to share about their three new probiotics that are coming out and they're going to be a game changer. I love their fermented mushroom and I feel that's a game changer too. There's so many awesome companies making great probiotics, but these ones are going to rock, so I'm excited about that. And then we have Real Mushrooms, another sponsor of the POD and the Book tour. Thank you so so much. Goodness Gracious is sponsoring my book tour. They've got some lovely cat foods that you guys need to check out. My cat Oscar is eating it right now. He eats it every. He loves. Oscar loves variety. So he's eating it every other day or every three days mixed with his. Well, he eats a lot of the green juju and he also eats some solutions from my other dog. Can't keep him out of it. So he just kind of. He's a grazer but he is a beautiful, beautiful cat and so Goodness Gracious is sponsoring the book tour. Then we have Earth Buddy. They used to sponsor the pod but they are sponsoring the book tour this year. Thank you. Sean Anacelle Biotech. We had a lovely episode of the POD about Anacel. I'm going to share some more up and coming stories. VanityL Pawdega Pawdega is a research based natural pet wellness store for dogs, cats and more. Check them out. You know, I've got a link on myherbaldog.com, the herbal dog, my tour website, my book website. Check them out. Pawdica.com and then Innovative Pet Lab. Love them. They're on theherbaldog.com under testing. I am building out my testing there so that you guys have that and of course Fido's bone broth coming out with a new allergy formula that yours truly formulated feline essentials. Dr. Ruth Roberts. Love what she's doing. She really is helping so many people with her health coach program. Solving a lot of issues there. I'm going to be working with her health coach program to help up the herbal knowledge of these coaches. Love that and things in the future for that Rossum. I just did an event for Rossum in Plainfield, Illinois. Man, if you ever have the chance to go to that store.

Wow.

They ship nationwide. Okay. They ship nationwide and it is direct farm to table. And yeah, they ship nationwide. Check them out.

Rawsome for pets.

You can get the link on my herbal dog website, theherbaldog.com and then raw Pets Tampa. They also ship nationwide. Raw Pets Tampa. That is Sonya Tutwiler. Love her. She's supporting me in my tour and cope. Coco Therapy. Coco Therapy. Thank you very much girls. Love the Coco girls. They are supporting me on my tour. So thank you everyone for that. Let's talk Cushing's. So I had a dog named Yacky that had Cushing's disease and one of the main symptoms that we saw with her is that she had this like kind of lump in the front of her chest. And it was pretty interesting. And I'm like, you know, what's that? At first I thought it was a lipoma and it wasn't. This was, I don't even know, like 23 years ago. So this was a long time ago. She had Cushing's disease. And you know, it's an endocrine disorder. And you know, I think, you know, it's very, I think it's tied to spay and neuter, I think it's tied to stress. I think it's tied to xenoestrogens in the environment. It definitely wasn't something that affected dogs highly at all. And now we're seeing so much of it along with Addison's. Much more Cushing's than Addison's in my humble opinion. And it's a pretty complex endocrine disorder. You know, it's prolonged exposure to high levels of cortisol. And some people think that it's not Cushing's, it's Plechner's. Now Plectors is also estrogen based. That's another episode. But the jury is out. So we're just gonna talk about Kushing's. So prolonged exposure to high levels of cortisol can give you Cushing's disease. And I mean can give you and your dog Cushing's disease. And cortisol is a hormone that's produced by the adrenal glands. Okay. Hormone produced, Produced, produced, produced by the adrenal glands. Okay. That's what's going on there. And just so you know, guys, I don't have my normal microphone and all that stuff. So I hope I am doing well. I know my microphone, my travel microphone is a little sensitive. So you might hear me moving around in my chair like when I was reading for my audible book. Oh, and by the way, if you guys haven't purchased the herbal dog book, you better get cook it. He had purchased it on my website. You can purchase on Amazon. Barnes and Noble. I guess I've sold out in England. Awesome. I hope they replenish pretty soon. Book is in Australia. Just a little side note, I am an Aries, so sometimes I have tangents. But I'll get back to it. I'll get back to it. So again, cortisol, hormone produced by the adrenal glands. And it, you know, I think that it hits more middle aged to older dogs. But what does that really mean anymore, right?

People are saying that dogs are old.

At 7 and 8, which is again ridiculous. It's what we're doing to our dogs that is aging them. They are not meant to be old at that age at all. So but it, you know, age 12, 13, 14, you can see Cushing's. But we're seeing it in a lot of ages of dogs right now. So. Yeah, don't kill the passenger. So, cortisol. Let's talk about cortisol. So what is cortisol? We said it's a hormone. Okay. And it's a glucocoteroid hormone. I don't know if that's the proper spelling blue. Co. Corticoid glucortocorticoid hormone. We could sound it out. It's produced by the adrenal glands, like I said, and it sits right, right above the kidneys. Okay. The adrenal glands are so important, and they take a huge hit when we spay and neuter. That's why I'm saying, you know, a lot, you know, if we're going to spay and neuter, I think I've mentioned.

This before, we have to support.

We have to support the adrenals. We need to support the thyroid. We need to support the reproductive organs. We need to support the liver and the nervous system and the lymphatics and the kidneys, all of that stuff regularly. So. And you can find a lot of that information in my book. So the adrenals regulate metabolism in the body, okay. And they regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, and they support immune function because everything is connected. And they help your dog's body manage stress. They help with that fight or flight, okay? And that helps control inflammation. So do you see how all this connected? That's why I tell people we need to stabilize the nervous system right away before we try healing the body. So while, you know, while essential for health. Right. Cortisol, you have to have cortisol for health. But too much cortisol increases issues in the body and through all of the body systems. All of your dog's body systems are affected by cortisol and especially too much cortisol. All right, so we have a few different types of Cushing's disease, and some are more dominant than the other. The first one is what you call pituitary dependent hyper adrenocorticism. Say that 15 times. Its acronym is PDH. Okay? And it's about, I would say 80, 85% of all the cases. And usually it's caused by A. Well, 99% of the time. I'm not going to say 100, but science has said that it is caused by a benign tumor in the pituitary gland. And a lot of times when we support the thyroid and we support the endocrine system, we need to support the pituitary gland. Okay. And I will talk about that when we discuss things, how to support these issues. So we support the pituitary gland and that produces. That can produce excessive. We're going to say it again. Hormones in the pituitary gland. Okay. And it's a lovely name called like adrenocorticotropic. Yeah, adrenocorticotropic. Let's just say that, I mean, you know, you've been with me a while. If you haven't, welcome to the mispronunciation club. Acronym acth. Okay. ACTH overstimulates. It causes hyperactivity in the adrenal glands to produce cortisol. And we don't want that. So that little benign tumor, that's what it's doing. And it's really common in smaller breeds. So we got, you know, lots of poodles and poodle mixes. We got dachshunds, we've got terriers, lots of terrier mixes. But so many dogs can get. Can get Cushings. Now, notice my dog Yacky was a rat terrier, so there's that. So the second type of Cushing's is hyperina adrenocorticism. It's adh. We discussed it earlier. Okay, well, that was pdh. I'm sorry? Adh. Adrenal dependent. The first one was pituitary dependent. Right. And that's about 10 to 15% of the cases. And this is caused by not a tumor on the pituitary, but on the adrenal. Okay. And that's caused by. Don't know. I am going with messing with the endocrine system and stress because we know dogs are stressed out of their minds because we are. So this one can be benign or malignant. Some of them are cancer. This is definitely a tumor that produces cortisol. Okay. Has nothing to do. Well, they say it has nothing to do with the pituitary gland. It happens directly on the adrenals. But me, I'm. Everything is connected. So I'm not going to put that jury out to pasture yet. But this one happens more in larger dogs. So science says. Thank you, science. And then the third kind is Iatrogenic Cushing syndrome. Okay. Iatrogenic Cushing's. And this can be caused by long term use of steroids like prednisone. Okay. It's a big risk of using steroids long term. Because steroids shut off the body and they screw up the endocrine system. And I would like to add a number of four. That is idiopathic Cushing's syndrome. That means we have no idea what caused the Cushing. Right. Everything else is fine. And your dog still has Cushing. All of the symptoms, but not the clinical signs. So I'm going with four types of. But the iatrogenic Cushings are Aya. Not really positive on the pronunciation there. Of course it is again caused by steroids. And steroids suppress the natural cortisol regulation in the body. And I think that when you catch it early that it's pretty reversible by going off the steroids, but not always. So there's that. And I've seen a lot of dogs get Cushings from steroid use, all types of dogs. So pushing is one of those things. And Addison's is one of those things that kind of develops slow and steady. But if you know the signs early, you can make a huge difference in your dog. So there's a few. Okay. Some are more severe than the other, like hyperpigmentation, so like darkening skin, then there's, you know, panting at rest. But if your dog is damp, then that can be an issue. I think that dampness can lead to Cushings for sure. As far as energetics are concerned. You can find that in my book and in my course, hair loss. Okay. And that's symmetric. So on both sides, hair loss, increased appetite, increased urination, increased thirst. Right. And then you have that quintessential pot bellied, Cushing's symptom you get. And Yacky had it. Yacky had that pot bellied because it has this fat redistribution issue. And then there's muscle wasting at the same time, and we don't like that. And then when it's super bad, you can get calcium deposits in the skin in advanced cases. And so that can be an issue. But, you know, we're not really sure how to deal with that. I certainly don't know how to deal with that, but maybe your vet does if your dog has that. But that's pretty advanced case of Cushing's. So how allopathically, how does your dog get diagnosed with Cushing's? Right. How does it happen? Well, you can get blood work and urinalysis. A lot of times there's elevated alp. There might be protein in the urine. Urine might be more dilute. Right? Might be more dilute. There are some specific tests, you know, a lot of some. Sometimes some of these tests, your dog has all the symptoms and the testing is inconclusive. Right. So we have to look at the whole picture. But there's something called an ACTH stimulation test. There is a low dose dexamethasone suppression test. That's the lddst. And then there's the high dose dexamethasone suppression test. That's the HDD to the S to the T. And that helps differentiate pituitary versus adrenaline. Right. There's a few more. There are a few more tests, you know, the ultrasound and there. There might be a test that I'm forgetting. I don't think so, but there might be. So I think it's important to look at, you know, what you're going to expect from your vet. Like, how is that going to look? Right? And so, you know, they're going to look at muscle wasting, they're going to look at cognitive decline, they're going to look at kidney damage, they're going to look at, you know, has your dog has a history of pancreatitis? Because that can be one of the signs. Does he have high blood pressure? You know, how many infections has he had? These are all, like, symptoms of Cushing's when it goes untreated. Right. When things kind of get nasty. As far as getting treatment from your vet for Cushing, well, there are a few things. So a lot of people are like, can I just get surgery? No, surgery is not an option for Cushing's. It's not something you can solve via surgery. There is lysodren. I think it's called mito pain, but I know it as lysedrin. And that reduces cortisol by destroying the tissue in the adrenal cortex. I'm not a big fan of that. And then there's better all which inhibits, like, cortisol production. That's a big one. Used in allopathy or. Allopathy. That's right. Pronunciation. That's definitely one that's used a lot. And I'm talking about the pituitary dependent type.

I'm sorry.

Yeah. Like for pituitary tumors, you know, surgery is not an option. Now we have adrenal tumor dependent. These are, remember, allopathic solutions for Cushing's. We're going to deal with herbs for sure, but these are allopathic solutions. All right, so first we have surgical removal. All right. I'm not a big fan of that one either. And you can remove the tumor on the adrenal glands if your dog is young or if they're super healthy, you can look at that. But I definitely would exhaust all options before that is a thing. And then you can also use veterol for the adrenal dependent and then, you know, for the steroid dependent, that's just getting off the steroids, right? Getting off the steroids is important now.

So what do we do about supporting the body when it has Cushings? Well, first grab hold of my book, the Herbal Dog and read about the nervous system section and the vagus nerve, because that's really going to help. And I have some episodes about the vagus nerve and the nervous system. So listen to those. We need to support the liver, we need to support the nervous system, we need to support the lymphatic system, we need to support the adrenals and the endocrine system. So things that support liver like milk thistle, dandelion root, and like rhodiola. Phytoembryonic therapy. Ashwagandha. Holy basil. These are adaptogens. They're mild adaptogens. Gotu kola, bacopa. Gotu kola is cooling. Bacopa is not, not so cooling. Reishi mushroom. Excellent. Like neuroendocrine immune support. And then lymphatics. Calendula cleavers. Those are two really good ones. And eating a fresh diet or a lightly cooked diet, ease up on the carbohydrates. That's not going to help. And then we're going to do digestive enzymes. We're going to make sure we're giving good omega 3 fatty acids. Uh, cod liver oil. Fermented cod liver oil is good. Alga oil. That's another good thing. You know, try to avoid synthetic. Synthetic anything.

Okay?

Just try to avoid it as much as you can, right? As much as, as much as you can support the nervous system. Again, go over to my book, look at that, like go over the nervous system and see, you know, what can be done. And then nettle seed. Nettle seed is a good adaptogen. Nettle leaf, burdock root. Burdock root is cooling for cool dogs. Parsley. Parsley seed is a good, you know, it's going to help the lymph, it's going to help the kidneys. So one of the remedies that I've been, I've definitely been using for decades is a remedy from native remedies. Pets, Pet alive. Right? You can get it at like only natural pet. You can Google it. Native remedy, Pet Alive. And it's called Kush X Drops M. It's a homeopathic And I've had great, great, great Results with has Adrenalinum 7C, Arsenicum 30, Berberis 3C Chelidonium 2X. Oh, I think Berbis is 3X Hep Sulf. I think it's a 30C. It's got Mercurious in there and pituitary and homeopathic dandelion. And I absolutely love that remedy. Now there's some others too. There's one from pet wellbeing that is adrenal care. That's a good one. I mean, it's got a lot in it though, a lot. Like it's got ashwagandha and holy basil and it's got turmeric and bacopa and astralagus and blessed thistle and chaste tree and I think prickly ash. That's going to be a little net warming for more cool dogs. And that's a good one to use. I really love the native remedies Pets Alive, though. I mean, I've just had. I've had such good results with it, you know, but you can give things a try. I mean, that's what you should do and see how your dog reacts. Because it's important just to observe, right? Observe. And native remedies Pets Alive. It's like you go to nativeremedies.com and then you click Pets Alive. It's at the top and it says Pet Alive for pets. They have what's called a complete Kush X combo pack. And that is the Kush X drops M and the Kush X drops S. Okay, so the M is the homeopathic I just talked about. And then the S is a formula that's a lot less. So we have dandelion leaf and root, burdock root, astragalus, licorice and urethral, which is Siberian ginseng in water and glycerin. And that one is a good one. And a lot of people use them together to help with Cushing's. And so another way to look at. I mean, I highly recommend those. Okay. Just straight up highly recommend them. And then another way to deal with Cushings if those don't work, because I would try the native remedies Pets Live. I don't have any affiliation towards them. I just like a lot of their remedies. They have good remedies. But if those don't work, then I would bring phytoembryonic therapy on board. Okay, There's a couple. There is stinging nettle bud. Now that works for Addison's and Cushing's. It's just what's called an adrenal balancer. It's also a mild adaptogen.

Okay.

And then there is. See, what was the other one? Oh, California poppy. That one's cooling. They use the young shoots, but it's not as cooling as regular California poppy. That one is good. You don't want to use it if your dog has Addison's, which we will talk about next time. But it is a good one. It's a phytoembryonic. You can get that in my store. And that is California poppy. I usually give it once in the morning and before bed. But again, you want to try the native remedies Pets Alive first. And then there is oak, and that's a phytoembryonic therapy. Oak is a little on the warming and drying side. The bud is. It's oak bud. That's one that I would definitely get some coaching about. But I would start like one to two drops and a lot of like the general phytoembryonic therapy dosing is in my book. But I'd start with one drop twice a day and then move up to no more than five for a big dog, one for an extra small dog. And then we have rye. Rye is again warming and it is the germinating seed and rootlets of rye. And no gluten involved there, but it's good for Cushing's as well. So those are a couple of, I would say, remedies that are phytoembryonic. And I've got an episode on phytoembryonics that can be used if the native remedies Pets Alive does not work.

Okay.

So thank you, thank you. Thank you for listening to the POD today. I appreciate it. Thanks for your support. About my book tour, check out the herbaldog.com for book tour dates and times. I am hitting the road soon. In June and July on the East Coast. I'm going to be at Dr. Jody Morgan's event in Florida and then three other places I'm going to be in, in Largo and Melbourne, Florida, and then Fort Lauderdale at the end of May there, I think may, like 17th, 18th, 19th, something like that. I'll be signing books at Judy Morgan's event and yeah, and then I'll be heading east and doing that kind of stuff. I got a couple weeks after that. I'm going to Italy on a phytoembryonic therapy research TR trip in the last week of April to about the. Think about the 10th of May so I can't wait to share that with you. Very exciting. I'm super excited about it. Okay, check out my courses online and again, you guys are awesome.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Dogs Are Individuals. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app. And don't forget, sharing is caring. So if you love Dogs Are Individuals Podcast, share it with your friends and family who love dogs. This will help me so much. And remember, as a listener, I appreciate you much. Thanks to Resonant Media, my podcast production team. This podcast is produced by Drake Peterson and edited by by Mike Fry. Any questions? Email the show, go to k9herbalist.com, click podcast contact in the menu and then fill out that form and I'll answer any questions here online. Okay, so thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dogs Are Individuals Podcast and I'm going to talk to you in our next episode. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for veterinary care. This podcast doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor, veterinarian or healthcare provider first before starting anything new. And that includes herbs. I'm not a doctor and I don't treat disease or prescribe anything. I'm a traditional herbalist providing herbal support education only. Regarding any products I may suggest the statements made regarding these products have not been available evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The efficacy of these products has not been confirmed by FDA approved research. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. All information presented here on the podcast is not meant as a substitute or alternative to information from your vet. Please consult your veterinary professional about potential interactions or other possible complications before using any production.